slkinsey

I'll certainly agree that, to me, pizza has always been about the crust. But, leaving out the old school coal-fired places, I'm not sure NYC deck-oven by-the-slice pizza has been defined by a superior crust in a long, long time. There's only so good the crust can be with this style of pizza. Sure, there are some places like Di Fara and Sal & Carmine's that manage to turn out a better crust than usual (ableit radically different in the case of these two examples), but I wouldn't say even the best places have been head-and-shoulders above the norm. The places that have always used canned "pizza sauce" have probably always had mediocre-to-crappy sauce on their pizza. I would question whether there was a great deal of pre-made "pizza sauce" being sold in the 1970s, and almost certainly there wasn't in the 1950s. I would also question whether, in fact, there even exists a high quality "pizza sauce" sold to the restaurant trade in gigantic metal cans. Most likely such a sauce would cost more than it would cost a pizzeria to make its own sauce. Clearly most of them aren't doing that, and the huge leap in sauce quality at places like Di Fara that do make their own sauce is usually obvious. Of course canned sauce doesn't have to be poor quality, but unfortunately it almost always is poor quality. Personally, once I started making my own tomato sauce around 20 years ago, I've never been able to stomach any brand of commercial pasta sauce regardless of brand or cost. I have to assume there are even greater limitations on the quality of pizza sauce that comes in #10 cans.

Patsy's East Harlem -- certainly the best old-NYC-school coal-fired pizza in Manhattan and arguably the best in the City -- is made by Latino pizzaioli.

The reality is that there are probably at least three distinct styles of "NY Pizza."

I just don't care for that much cheese, so I doubt I would have liked it. But, of course I believe that the quality was much higher twenty years ago when they used much better cheese. That's the main thrust of my post. However, the point that I'm making in the part of my post you're quoting is that today they can't use the same amount of cheese and make the economics work unless they use crappy quality Wisconsin pizza cheese. So, if they want to use better quality cheese and produce a better quality slice, they have two choices: 1. use the same gigantic amount of cheese at higher quality and raise their prices accordingly, which I don't think would work economically with their clientele; or 2. use a smaller amount of high quality cheese. Looking at the picture of the slice Steven posted above, I think you could easily cut the volume of cheese by half and still have a generous amount of cheese.

I'd say that Steven has hit the nail squarely on the head in blaming the general decline on crappy, rubbery Wisconsin pizza cheese. Twenty years ago, I don't think the economic factors were there (massive industry consolidation combined with, until the relatively recent spike in fuel prices, ridiculously inexpensive transportation) in favor of Wisconsin pizza cheese. Most likely, most of the NYC pizza places in the 50s-60s were getting their cheese locally, in the 70s-80s they were getting their cheese regionally, and starting in the 90s going forward they were getting their cheese nationally. This general movement away from local and artisinal/small batch to national and industrial had to have been accompanied by a corresponding decline in quality, which would be especially noticable with respect to pizza made in the "pile on the cheese" style. Consider also that there was surely a similar shift in other ingredients. In the 50s-60s, I'm sure most pizza places were making their own pizza sauce. Nowadays, it's rare to see a "slice shop" level pizza place in the City that even has a stove in evidence. They're all getting cans of pre-made "pizza sauce" and perhaps (but not always) tweaking it with things like dried herbs and garlic powder. Continuing in that direction, I can't imagine that all pizza places in the 50s-60s were using Hormel pepperoni, which is what 95% of them use today. Nowadays, if a place like Ray's, Original Ray's, Famous Ray's, Famous Original Ray's, Original Famous Ray's or Seriously We're Not Kidding This Is The Authentic Original Famous Ray's wanted to duplicate the quality of 1980, they would have to charge a lot more for a slice. And there's some question in my mind as to whether the jump in quality would be enough that they could continue to compete. Rather, the game seems to be: either you make do with crap Wisconsin pizza cheese and (hopefully) make up the difference as best you can by tweaking your sauce and, as Steven points out, offering an expansive array of interesting toppings, in which case you charge the going price for a slice, or you radically upgrade your ingredients, position yourself as a more "gourmet" pizzeria and charge 50% more. Honestly, in my opinion, the best thing a place like Ray's could to to improve pizza quality would be to spend twice as much on the cheese and use half as much of it.

Just a thought, but I'm assuming that they would've stored some ingredients in 'dasher' bottles (like bitter bottles). Do we have any idea what sort of bottles these would have been? Actually, I don't believe this was the case. I believe that, if one is looking at an old recipe, a dash from a bitters bottle would have been significantly smaller than a dash from a maraschino bottle or curaçao bottle, which I assume came directly from the bottle. My going-in assumption is that two dashes of liquor or juice comes in at somewhere between a teaspoon on the light side and a quarter-ounce on the heavy side -- which is significantly more volume than you'd get from two dashes out of a bitters bottle. This becomes fairly apparent when you try out some of the older recipes. Plenty of old recipes call for, say, 2 ounces of gin, 1/2 ounce of maraschino and two dashes of lemon juice. Well, if those lemon juice dashes are bitters bottle dashes, you might as well not include them at all because they won't make any difference. On the other hand, a quarter-ounce of lemon juice would make a difference in that drink.

Ah. So you're talking about "a saute of something," as opposed to the act of sauteing something. I agree that there is usually a moist component in "a something saute" or "saute of something, but I'd argue that the act of sauteing is moving around largely chunk-shaped pieces of food in a limited amount of fat over high heat so as to brown them evenly on all sides (the act of frying being much the same except that the food isn't moved around very much). However, once one has completed the sauteing of the food items one often uses liquid and a lid, and calls the result "something saute." Many times, people are actually frying and call it "saute" for a variety of reasons. To be more clear, I wasn't reacting to your description of using a lid in your "chicken saute." Rather, I thought I was reacting to your description of using a lid while sauteing. In my understanding, one wouldn't be able to saute (the browning stage of your chicken saute dish) unless the lid was off. The cooking subsequent to the sauteing (or frying) would be braising, if it involved liquid and a lid. Of course, who knows... Ruhlman may entirely contradict that understanding.

Russ, isn't the whole point of the saute technique that you're keeping the ingredients relatively dry? How can that be reconciled with use of a lid?

If there is one thing that I think drags down the overall quality of NYC barbecue (which, it must be said, has made huge strides in the past few years) it's that so many of the places seem to be trying to be all things to all people, and produce radically different styles of barbecue. It's not the case, as some people think, that Texas open pit barbecue joints cook only beef, and so on. But it is the case that they don't make Eastern Carolina style whole hog. Similarly, barbecue joints in Eastern Carolina may be cooking brisket, but they aren't making mesquite smoked Texas-style brisket. What we see in the City is that even the best multi-style barbecue places really only excel in one style, and their other offerings tend to be substantially less successful. Similarly, the best places that have opened in the past few years seem to be geared towards making one style of barbecue, or rather have one approach to making barbecue. Hill Country is an excellent example of this approach... note that they do not offer pulled pork.

I wouldn't think that the taste would be different if you cook pasta covered or uncovered. I prefer to cook pasta in the largest volume of water practical (many people cook pasta in far to little water -- I consider 10 quarts to be about minimum for a pound of pasta). As a result, my pasta pot (this one, with a strainer insert) is usually filled close to the top. If I were to leave it covered throughout the pasta cooking process with the burner on full, it would foam over soon after coming back to the boil due to the starch released into the water.

Why in God's name would you want to do that, Sam? Be a sport and have some folks over! Good point. When are you free?

Yea, I'm with markk on this one. A lot of these things we cook uncovered we would either like to reduce (e.g., tomato sauce), might suffer from being covered (e.g., stocks), need more attention than a cover can provide (e.g., custard), would like to be at a rolling boil and therefore don't benefit much from a cover (e.g., potatoes), might overboil and foam over (e.g., pasta) and so on. The things we cook covered are only covered because we would like to have a steamy environment and would like to actively discourage evaporation (e.g., rice and braising). Anything that is primarily liquid and will be actively bubbling is not something I would tend to cover as I was cooking it. I often use some combination of covering and not-covering, primarily for heat-retention purposes. For example, when I cook pasta I always put the lid back on the pasta pot until the water comes back to a full boil.

So, lately some Batavia arrak has been showing up again in NYC stores. It's been Batavia-Arrack van Oosten. A few bottles have come my way lately, and I'm looking for some ideas. Anyone who has read Jerry Thomas's book will know that Batavia arrack is featured prominently in the punch recipes. For example, we have the Arrack Punch. JT's recipe for three tumblers of puch goes something like this: So, it's 6:3:2:1 water to Jamaica rum to Batavia arrack to lemon juice, sweetened to taste. Leaving out the water, you could do something like this for a single serving: Anyway, what I'm looking for are good recipes for Batavia arrack, and secondarily advice as to how to adapt large volume punch recipes such as those in JT to single servings.

Don't remember where I bought it. A lot of Haus Alpenz importa (Zirbenz Stone Pine Liqueur of the Alps, Batavia Arrack van Oosten, Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot Liqueur and Crème de Violette, etc.) are starting to show up in NYC liquor stores lately. Recently I snagged some of their crème de violette, which is quite nice. They sell for a bit less than 25 bucks a bottle, I'd say.

I recently acquired a bottle of Rothman & Winter Orchard Apricot Liqueur. It's an interesting product and I decided to taste-test it alongside Marie Brizard's Apry, which has long been considered the flagship apricot brandy. First impressions were that R&W's Orchard Apricot smells a lot more like a just-opened container of dried apricots. It's a light, cleaner, "fresh" aroma. Apry, by contrast, had a richer, more complex nose that was less obviously "apricot." In addition, Apry has a considerable almond-like component in the nose (apricot kernel?). Tasted along, the R&W product, again, has a light, fresh flavor very evocative of dried apricots. That said, I found the impression a little one-note, without a lot of backbone and complexity, which made me wonder how it would hold up in a cocktail. As predicted, Apry was richer, fuller and had a more substantial mouthfeel, but was less reminiscent of dried apricots. The kernel flavor was also quite apparent. Interestingly, Apry had a slight bite and seemed "hotter" compared to Orchard Apricot. Perhaps this is because Apry is 60 proof compared to only 48 for Orchard Apricot? I believe it was Eric who said that Orchard Apricot isn't as sweet as Apry. I can't say that this was my reaction. Or rather, it may have been the case that Apry's more intense and rich flavors compensated for a higher brix All in all, I didn't have the impression that Apry had any more "sweetness per flavor" compared to Orchard Apricot. Rothman & Winter says that "Orchard Apricot Liqueur combines juice from the seasonal harvest of Austria’s famed Klosterneuberger apricots (known locally as "Marillen") with an eau-de-vie produced from this same fruit." I wonder if this is an eau de vie made from distilled fermented apricot juice, or whether apricot flesh is macerated in neutral spirits which are then redistilled. Regardless, Orchard Apricot has a fresh, "juicy" character similar to other stabilized-fruit-juice-and-booze products such as Hypnotiq -- although I should hasten to add that R&W's products are much higher in quality. I was a little disappointed that it didn't have a more apparent eau de vie character (more on this below), and I didn't detect any evidence that apricot kernels were used in producing the eau de vie R&W uses in Orchard Apricot. Rather, it presented the light, uncomplicated, fresh "juicy" flavors and aromas of apricot. Marie Brizard says that "the apricots selected by Marie Brizard come from Africa and the Rousillon region of France. After distillation and maceration, the 'spirit' is blended with the finest Cognac to produce a smooth and velvety liqueur." The label also indicates that caramel coloring is added. It's not entirely clear from this whether MB macerates the apricots in neutral spirits and then redistills the infused liquid, making a kind of eau de vie, or whether the infused liquid is used as-is. Regardless, the almond-like flavors and aromas suggest that apricot kernels may be part of MB's process, whereas they and not part of R&W's process. Unlike Orchard Apricot, Apry does not include apricot juice. Apry uses Cognac (more on this below), which undoubtedly contributes to Apry's richness and overall fuller flavor. I suppose the most simple comparison between the two of them would be to say that Orchard Apricot is more like fruit juice whereas Apry is more like a fruit preserve. The former has a light flavor of fresh fruit, while the latter has a concentrated flavor of transformed fruit. We decided to give the two apricot liqueurs a go in a cocktail, and chose the Barnum (Was Right) Cocktail: 2 ounces Tanqueray; 1 ounce Apry or Orchard Apricot; 1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice; 1 short dash Angostura bitters; shake/strain. Both liqueurs came through quite nicely, and the two drinks appeared to have approximately the same level of sweetness. The version with Apry was noticably more colored. Interestingly, dilution with other ingredients really opened up Apry's fruit flavors, although the kernel flavor was apparent and the Apry cocktail was noticably richer. The version with Orchard Apricot was overall lighter and more delicate with a more subtle flavoring, while retaining the fresh character that sets R&W's product apart. Overall, my friends preferred the Apry cocktail. I enjoyed them both, and thought the Orchard Apricot cocktail was a nice change of pace. With a product this subtly flavored, however, it's going to be difficult to use in cocktails so that its flavor makes an impact but it doesn't overly sweeten the drink. I can see it being useful as an aromatic float, perhaps (Alchemist used to make me a drink that more or less consisted of a egg white gin sour with a bit of damson and/or sloe gin floated on top -- something like that sounds like a possibility for Orchard Apricot). With respect to R&W's eau de vie and MB's Cognac (remember I said "more on this below)... a lot depends on how much they're using. Just because they say they're using eau de vie and Cognac doesn't mean that 100% of the liquor has to be eau de vie and Cognac. Indeed, I would be surprised if this were the case. Something like 51% would be what I would expect, and there have been "XXXXX-based liqueurs" sold in the US that have had a substantially lower percentage of the claimed base spirit. I should add, however, that using only a percentage of eau de vie or cognac isn't necessarily a bad thing. The manufacturers add enough of the product to contribute the flavors, aromas, etc. they want. Some manufacturers only claim to be made with "French vodka" or "the finest Cognac" or whatever for image and marketing purposes only, but I don't believe that is the case for either R&W or MB.

For reasons of schedule, I often have to shop at the 74th Street Fairway during peak after-work hours. Knowing what you want and where those things are located, and having a good game plan as to a single path that takes you everywhere you need to go is crucial. Usually for me: hard left into the vegetable aisle, then up to dairy for milk, butter and eggs, then bread, take a ticket for the appetizing line and buy coffee and cheese while waiting for my number to come up, then straight across to the North side, stopping for olive oil and/or vinegar on the way, then it's meat and/or fish, then into one of the Northernmost two aisles to get on line for a register. If I'm going upstairs to the organic section, I just walk down the express line chute to the front of the store and take the stairs. I never use a cart.

Not to mention that, although some people defend the utility of having everyone tacitly agree to pretend the critic is anonymous, most everyone agrees that it's virtually impossible to both remain anonymous and attain sufficient dining experience/maintain enough dining experiences in a given locale to have anything worthwhile to say as a critic. The idea that real, actual anonymity is "crucial" to a food critic's work seems laughable. Certainly, around NYC some of the food critics who have done the very best have turned out to be the least anonymous (e.g., David Rosengarten).

What's so time-intensive about farfalle? You just cut the pasta into rectangles and pinch it together in the center.

Freeze them on a cookie sheet. Once they're frozen, transfer them to a plastic ziplock bag. Cook from frozen.

D'oh! Was looking on the wrong part of the menu!

Kreuz is fairly expensive, especially considering where it is. For another frame of reference, Goode Company, which is arguably the best place in Houston, albeit not as good as Kreuz charges 7.95 for brisket, the flagship meat of Texas barbecue. Hill Country charges a bit more than double for lean brisket, and around 2 1/3 times more for fatty brisket. How large are the sides at Hill Country? At Goode it's 6.25 for a quart, which I assume is right around the size of Hill Country's "Feed Yer Family" portions selling at 14 to 16 bucks. Most likely, a dinner at Hill Country would come out approximately double what a dinner at Goode Company would cost, if not more.

Huge topic on tagine cooking right here: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=63502

And let's not forget the Ducasse/Psaltis trick of making a clam chowder base out of pureed clams. I think they used razor clams for the puree, probably as much for the color as the flavor (I've done this using pureed quahogs for the base, and while it was delicious, the color was a bit murky).

I have owned any number of siphons over the years. My advice is that you don't want to go less expensive than the baseline iSi, but rather you want to go more expensive -- more to the point, you want glass. My experience is that, after 6 months or so, the metal soda siphons start to smell like "old canteen" and nothing you can do to them will get rid of that slightly musty smell and taste in the water.

The only one I know is the Debonair 2.5 oz : Oban single malt scotch 1.0 oz : Canton ginger liqueur Stirr/strain. Garnish with lemon twist.